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“The moment you accept what troubles you've been given, the door will open. Welcome difficulty as a familiar comrade. Joke with torment brought by the friend. Sorrows are the rags of old clothes and jackets that serve to cover, then are taken off. That undressing and the beautiful naked body underneath is the sweetness that comes after grief. The hurt you embrace becomes joy.”
― Jalaluddin Rumi

“But some contemporary believers, such as Lisa Domke, a pastor and mother in Seattle, ground their identity in Christ’s love but a love that goes beyond sentiment or feeling. “I say that I am someone seeking to live in the world with love and humility,” Lisa reports, “following God in the way of Jesus.” Love is the active practice of Christian virtue. As Sky, a Seattle Baptist, relates, “Children know that love is behavior, not romantic words.”
― Diana Butler Bass, A People's History of Christianity: The Other Side of the Story

“The team’s caravan traveled over difficult roads as American bombs fell. The car ahead of the one carrying Jonathan and Leah crashed. Jonathan and Leah remember the horror of seeing their friends thrown from the car. They jumped out to tend their injured colleagues, unsure of how to proceed. Just then some Iraqis stopped by the roadside. Seeing the wounded Americans lying in the ditch, they picked them up. Jonathan recalls, “They carried our bleeding friends to this town called Rutba. When we got there the doctor said, ‘Three days ago your country bombed our hospital. But we will take care of you.’ He sewed up their heads and saved their lives. When I asked the doctor what we owed him for his services, he said, ‘Nothing. Please just tell the world what has happened in Rutba.”
― Diana Butler Bass, A People's History of Christianity: The Other Side of the Story

“Part of universal hospitality is in the practice of befriending other religious traditions and practices, while remaining deeply grounded. Brent Bill thinks Christians need to engage in “theological hospitality,” that we “should be open and welcoming…instead of starting with the theological differences that divide us.”
― Diana Butler Bass, A People's History of Christianity: The Other Side of the Story